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davidxryan

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Long Kong

14 January 2006 - 3 out of 5 users found this review helpful.

The screenwriter William Goldman had a point when he said that if you're going to make a film more than two hours long, you'd better damn well be David Lean. For all its visual flair, undoubted ambition and relentless energy, this three-hour blockbuster drags badly, particularly in the frenzied middle section, set on Skull Island. It doesn't help that the surprisingly dodgy CGI keeps drawing attention to itself. Call it nostalgia if you like, but I preferred Kong when he was a stop-motion miniature in black-and-white.

By the end  and I'm labelling this a spoiler, just in case there's anyone out there who doesn't know how King Kong ends  I was running severely short of the goodwill that had sustained me through the first hour. Jackson makes such a meal of the finale that all I could think of was: "Hurry up and die, ya big ape." The 1933 film had heart; this version just has bombast, a huge budget and ideas above its station.

Great taboo-buster, good film

12 January 2006 - 5 out of 14 users found this review helpful.

A good movie, with a stunning performance by Heath Ledger, but not really deserving of the rave reviews it's been getting. I'm guessing it's been overpraised because it's a "brave" film that breaks taboos. About 20 years ago on TV I caught a heterosexual equivalent starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn. It was called Same Time, Next Year and was, I think, adapted from a stage play. In any case, it covered much of the same ground, i.e. two lovers take the occasional break together while carrying on a family life with someone else. I should mention that I find Ang Lee's films awfully slow for the most part, and lost the will to live during Ride With The Devil. By comparison, this one's fairly compelling.

Wooden Allen

12 January 2006 - 7 out of 13 users found this review helpful.

Had the plot not got livelier in the last half hour, I would have given this 1/10. Seriously, it is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It's boring, pretentious, stilted and insanely implausible, with wooden acting and the worst dialogue this side of George Lucas (who at least has the excuse of making fantasy movies). Less than two hours after I left the cinema, I'm still wondering how the man who made one of my top 25 films  Sweet and Lowdown, in 1999  could have been responsible for this drivel. Woody, you have lost it, mate, and you clearly have no ear for how the British speak. So many unintentionally funny lines! "I grew up in Belgravia  maybe I could show you around London?" (Oh, and it borrows from Crimes and Misdemeanors, a film I would recommend without hesitation.)

no actor could emulate Hancock's genius

12 November 2003 - 4 out of 16 users found this review helpful.

This was a failure because of (i) the join-the-dots script, (ii) Alfred Molina's valiant but doomed attempt to recreate a comedy legend and (iii) the hilariously bad portrayal of the inimitable John Le Mesurier. Read the biographies instead.

Cruelly funny

11 August 2003 - 4 out of 5 users found this review helpful.

Broadcast when BBC Radio 1's new controller was merrily axing half of his star presenters for being too old and stuffy for a pop station, the most effective parts of this show are the thinly disguised reminders of British DJs' most embarrassing moments. At times it's more cruel than funny, and Enfield later apologised for his parody of Tony Blackburn's marital breakdown, which a distraught Blackburn shared with listeners in the 1970s.

the last straw!

4 August 2003 - 0 out of 1 users found this review helpful.

I've been addicted to films all my life.For several years I've made a point of seeing at least 100 on the big screen each year, as well as those I watch on TV, DVD etc. Then about three months ago, while I was watching Bulletproof Monk, a thought occurred to me. Why do I sit through so many dismal movies like this? Are films getting worse, or am I getting too old for the standard Hollywood "product" now that I'm in my mid-30s? It was an epiphany for me... and as a result, I haven't been to the cinema all summer.

upsetting for me

26 July 2003 - 6 out of 10 users found this review helpful.

Writer Lee Hall's story will stick in my mind purely for forcing me to relive my father's death from cancer 18 years earlier. I was roughly the same age as the kid in the movie, and living in the North-East of England where the film is set, so I identified with him all the more. For me personally, then, the latter stages of the film were very upsetting indeed - but two year on, taking the film as a whole, I regard Gabriel and Me as mediocre and otherwise forgettable, all told.

so bad it's genuinely hilarious

26 July 2003 - 2 out of 5 users found this review helpful.

If it had been on artistic merit alone, I'd have given this film a 1, but for all the laughs I've had from it, I'll give it a 7. It has the funniest sex scene ever committed to film, and don't get me started on the "there's only one doctor who can save Winona" stuff...